


Won't Be Long, Mick

by ronans



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, Grief, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:42:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronans/pseuds/ronans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey Milkovich opens the front door of his one bedroom house at the end of the worst day of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Won't Be Long, Mick

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to 9 Crimes on repeat as I wrote this I must hate myself ha hah a  
> Yeah, so this is a really short... thing I wrote in between prompts and stuff

Mickey Milkovich opens the front door of his one bedroom house at the end of the worst day of his life.

He stands in the doorway and breathes out a shaky sigh, hand still on the door knob. He can do this.

The house is vacant and nobody’d been home to turn on the lights when it got dark outside. The heating’s off and the chill of the outside has managed to fill up the inside. Mechanically, he crosses the floor and shuffles up the narrow stairwell. The creaks of the floorboards under his feet just remind him of the fact that the house is empty.

There’s no thought put in to how he enters the bathroom and opens the cupboard in there, pulling down as many fucking blankets and covers as he can get his hands on. There’s no way he’s sleeping in their bed tonight.

He nearly falls to the ground as all the fabric topples down and that nearly breaks him. He’s so close to tipping over the edge it’s a joke. But he keeps his balance and avoids the mirror as he passes it, worried that his skin’s even paler than usual and his eyes are filled with grief. He doesn’t want his brain to catch up with his expression just yet and he’s fucking amazing at putting off the inevitable.

Mickey thinks he might choke as he pauses outside the closed door of their bedroom, debating whether or not to force himself to go in. It’s… surreal. Like he should just open the door and it’s fine because Ian just got an early night. Ian had a headache, he was just sleeping. He cancelled their movie night with Mandy because he just wasn’t feeling too good. If Mickey wishes hard enough maybe he can trick himself into believing it’s the truth.

He manages to run a hand down his face whilst still carrying the mountain of sheets he’s going to take down to the sofa. No, he can’t sleep in their bed alone even though it might be the last chance he’ll have to smell Ian on the pillow.

He’s been sighing a lot today without even really noticing. These huge, heaving fucking hopeless sighs that sound like he’s trying to completely empty his lungs of air, hoping that all the bad feelings he’s suddenly got inside him will go with it. He sighs because he’s not let himself cry yet, he’s still in shock. And it still feels weird to cry after being brought up not to his entire life… before he got away from all that with Ian.

‘Fuck,’ he mutters, shaking his head and finally stepping away from the door. In some ways he’s endlessly glad whoever was last to leave shut it, kind of hopes it was Ian, even, for some irrelevant reason. He doesn’t have to look inside to see that Ian’s not there. With the door shut, he can still pretend, though.

The covers get thrown on the couch unceremoniously so he can free up his hands to take off his jeans. He can’t go get his clothes from their shared closet for obvious reasons. If he went in there it would defeat the idea of sleeping on the couch and avoiding everything.

What he can’t wrap his head around is how all this means he’ll be _alone_. All this progress they’d made, every damn fucking obstacle they’d overcome… and Mickey’s left alone and Ian’s not here.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ he says again, sinking his teeth into the inside of his cheek. He wants a cigarette but he already smoked through three packets today and his mouth tastes like an ashtray. Water... Might help.

Kicking his jeans fully off as he moves, he stumbles into the kitchen and turns on the tap, numbly pulling out a glass from a cabinet. His eyes travel to the fridge for some reason and he wishes they fucking hadn’t because there’s a note there in Ian’s handwriting that hadn’t been there this morning. He leaves the water running and shakily removes the paper out from where it’s pinned under a goofy fridge magnet Ian had bought a few years ago, claiming they needed that kind of shit in their new home because it showed character. He hums under his breath to prepare himself before scanning his eyes over the scrawled writing.

_Won’t be long, Mick. Just getting some beer for later. I love you x_

Suddenly he can’t cough away the lump in his throat anymore. His fingers spasm, wrinkling the paper because Ian’s not coming back. Maybe if he’d waited five- fuck, maybe even two more seconds before crossing the road, maybe if he’d not been so fucking happy to be spending time with both Mandy and Mickey in the evening, if he’d fucking _focused_ … Maybe Mickey wouldn’t be alone tonight. Maybe Mickey wouldn’t have been called to ID his body. Maybe Mickey wouldn’t be trapped in their house, surrounded by everything Ian aside from the actual man himself.

Surprisingly, it’s the first time he’s ever cried himself to sleep.


End file.
